Social identity and relations : implications for home energy demand and the peak load reduction in the UK

This paper explores how social relations and social identities shape home energy management practices at individual and collective levels. While emerging research has signalled the importance of social relations in shaping energy demand, there have been no empirical accounts to date. In addition, there have been few theoretical advances in the study of interconnected phenomena involved between social context and energy demand and between scales of the home and neighbourhood, with a dominant focus placed on individual homes and descriptive approaches. Social identities and relations shape both individual and collective actions, decisions, and experiences. Identities manifest in diverse routines, habits, and daily rhythms in and beyond the home. A deeper understanding of the ways they manifest could have significant implications for developing electrification and distributed energy transitions and understanding residents' roles within future interventions in energy demand and use, adoption, and peak load reduction. The approach of this study draws on novel conceptual grounds combining social identity theory, social practice theory and rhythm analysis to examine the characterisation of social relations and identities, alongside household energy demand practices. The methods include ethno-visual surveys involving 617 participants and 11 interviews with residents living in the Glasgow and Bristol regions in the UK. The findings enable new understandings of how social relations and identities can shape energy demand practices and the socio-spatial and technical implications this has on future peak load reduction and smart grids. The implications of the findings are twofold. First, the study shows how focusing on social relations and identities can lead to new forms of interventions in smart grid and energy systems transitions and the roles energy customers, the community and neighbourhoods may play. Second, there are policy implications for the planning of future automated demand management, through new socio-spatial insights into how different social identities and relations can contribute to just transitions and equitable energy futures in the UK

Socio-Temporal Dynamics and Spatial Scales for Future Home Energy Transitions and Crisis Planning – UK insights

Planning for future equitable home energy transitions and electrification is dependent onmultidimensional technical, social, temporal, and spatial insights. Despite growing calls to integratesocial, spatial, and temporal insights, most studies have either overlooked these dimensions orexamined them mostly from the perspective of social acceptance. The purpose of this paper is todiscuss the role of social identities in shaping collective energy behaviours and temporal rhythms inthe home and the consequences this may have on future electrification, flexible demand, energytransition and crisis planning. This research work draws on mixed methods using diverse data includingsurveys, photos, and interviews with residents in Glasgow and Bristol, UK. The research reveals thatsocial identities shape energy use temporal rhythms – either in regular or irregular patterns over time.These socio-temporal rhythms have diverse consequences for demand flexibility and crisis planningto provide a responsive and dynamic evidence-based approach. This work offers a novel socio-temporal and spatial approach that could be used by local government, the housing sector, and energyproviders in planning targeted collective responses to anticipated frequent energy crises and peakload events. There are also benefits to academics in offering a new conceptual lens by combining social practice, identity, and rhythm analysis for the study of energy transitions and crisis phenomena